Police foundation fraud: MNA agrees to refund Rs5.8 billion

PML-N MNA Anjum Aqeel Khan agrees to pay sum of Rs5.8 billion to the NPF after his confession before FIA.

ISLAMABAD: In a major breakthrough, the man at the centre of a multi-billion-rupee fraud in the National Police Foundation (NPF) has agreed to pay back Rs5.8 billion in cash or kind following comprehensive investigations into the affair by a team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

PML-N MNA Anjum Aqeel Khan has agreed to pay a sum of Rs5.8 billion to the NPF after his confession before an FIA joint investigation team that he had caused huge financial losses to the foundation as its real estate broker.

Aqeel Khan, who later joined politics in 2008, agreed to cough up the money two days before the hearing of the case in  the Supreme Court on February 24.

The written undertaking by Anjum Aqeel will be submitted before Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Thursday. The MNA has given a written undertaking to the FIA team in Lahore after four days of comprehensive investigations. The chief justice had taken suo motu action in the case on the basis of a story filed in The Express Tribune on January 30.

Meanwhile, a former managing director of the NPF, Iftikhar Ahmad Khan, has also been summoned by the FIA team for investigations to Islamabad on Wednesday along with other high-ranking officials who were allegedly part of this fraud.

The Express Tribune had reported that a confidential official inquiry report, which was submitted to Federal Interior Secretary Qamar Zaman Chaudhry earlier this month, said that MNA Anjum Aqeel Khan was involved in a six-billion-rupee land fraud in which he was aided by four former NPF officials, including former managing director Iftikhar Ahmed Khan. Others named in the report are former housing additional directors Abdul Hannan, Khuda Baksh and Laeeq Ahmed Khan.

The interior ministry had constituted an inquiry to probe the scam and submit its report to the Supreme Court on Thursday. A joint investigation team comprising officials of the FIA and the National Police Foundation was formed which investigated the matter.

Anjum Aqeel and NPF officials sat face to face to reach a consensus as to how much loss was actually caused by Anjum Aqeel Khan. He then gave in writing to the FIA team that he would either hand over land worth Rs5.8 billion or make a cash payment to the Foundation to settle the eight year old dispute.

FIA official Zafar Qureshi told The Express Tribune that in the second phase of the inquiry, it would be examined as to who else had collaborated with the MNA to rob the foundation of its assets worth billions of rupees and cases would be registered against those found guilty of the crime.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2011.